This t-shirt is the scary logical endpoint of Trump’s media tantrums
As the election nears, Donald Trump continues taking his trademark anti-media rhetoric to new heights, and his most hardcore supporters are taking that message to heart.
People at Trump rallies now routinely drop by the media area to give journalists a piece of their minds, such as chanting "Jew-S-A" at them.
It shouldn't entirely come as a surprise, then, to see someone at a Trump rally on Sunday wearing this:
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Yeah, it's gross. It's also the logical endpoint of the Trump media-bashing narrative.
From the start, Trump's made hating the media a central part of his campaign. He's called out particular reporters by name, mocked a journalist with a disability, and claimed that the media was conspiring to get Hillary Clinton elected.
That's a small sampling of the overall media-focused narrative that Trump has further embraced as the campaign has gone on. Heckling the press at his rallies is now as common as saying that the entire election is going to be rigged, or that Clinton should be in jail.
As the election neared, Trump's message turned into one of conspiracy and powerlessness. In Trump's reality, the media has corrupted the system to the point that extrajudicial killings are the only way to go. What else are you supposed to do when the country you love is being taken over by the forces meant to keep power in check?, the thinking goes.
There's something slightly more insidious to that shirt, though. It doesn't excoriate the media at-large. It targets the profession, and a person who pursues that profession. That all goes without mentioning the racial undertones of this shirt, in an election that's been one of the most racially charged in decades. Trump polls near 0% with black voters. The U.S. has a dark history with the lynching of black people, with a 2015 study finding that almost 4,000 were people killed in "racial terror lynchings" throughout the south between 1877 and 1950.
In this election cycle, death threats to journalists aren't all that uncommon. NBC's Katy Tur had to be escorted out of a rally by the Secret Service, with someone later tweeting "KILL EM ALL START W/ KATY TUR." Other journalists have been threatened in a similar fashion.
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As for where the shirt came from, there's a few different places on the internet all hawking the same election-themed stuff. One site, Zazzle.com, pulled the shirt. Thandsinks.com still has it available.
Topics Donald Trump Elections
Jason Abbruzzese is a Business Reporter at Mashable. He covers the media and telecom industries with a particular focus on how the Internet is changing these markets and impacting consumers. Prior to working at Mashable, Jason served as Markets Reporter and Web Producer at the Financial Times. Jason holds a B.S. in Journalism from Boston University and an M.A. in International Affairs from Australian National University.
